Erskine Out

“Henry Erskine was the best-natured man I ever knew, thoroughly a gentleman, and with but one fault: he could not say no, and thus sometimes misled those who trusted him.”

Walter Scott wrote the comments above in his journal (April 20, 1829).  Erskine was a Whig lawyer,

at a time when, according to Lord Henry Cockburn, in “Memorials of his Time”,

 ‘a Whig was viewed somewhat as a Papist was in the days of Titus Oates’.

Cockburn goes on to write of Erskine’s political downfall, on January 12^th, 1796.  A “you’re either with us or against us” attitude is evident in Cockburn’s observations:

‘Henry Erskine, the brightest ornament of the profession, was Dean of the Faculty of Advocates. Considering the state of the times, the propriety of his presiding at a public meeting to petition against the war may be questioned. The official head of a public body should consider what is due to the principles and the feelings of those he may be supposed to represent; and to the great majority of the Faculty, Erskine’s conduct must have been deeply offensive. Still, the resolution to dismiss him was utterly unjustifiable. It was nearly unprecedented, violent, and very ungrateful. He had covered the Faculty with the lustre of his character for several years; and, if wrong, had been misled solely by a sense of duty. Nevertheless, on the 12th of January, 1796, he was turned out of office. Had he and the Faculty alone been concerned in this intemperate proceeding, it would not have occurred. But it was meant, and was taken, as a warning to all others to avoid the dangers of public meetings on the wrong side…’

Fairy Mythology

On January 12, 1667, Samuel Pepys records in his diary '...So home to supper, and then to read a little in  Moore's [More's] "Antidote against Atheisme," a pretty book, and so to bed.'

Henry More is labeled a Cambridge Platonist, a category of philosophers distinguished by having a theological background.  Among others, More taught Anne Finch, sister to Heneage Finch, who was part of yesterday's post.

More's book begins 'The grand truth which wee are now to bee imployed about, is the proving that there is a God..'  The book treats witches and superstition along the way.  More's work is tied in to Walter Scott's and William Shakespeare's, in Minor White Latham's "Elizabethan Fairies, the fairies of folklore and the fairies of Shakespeare".

As Latham writes, 'Only in the philosophical and religious treatises, and in discourses proving the existence or nonexistence of witches, as the works of Henry More, Glanvil, John Webster, Edward Fairfax, Harsnet, Hobbes, and Robert Kirk are the fairies of folklore to be found...'

And on Shapespeare: 'By 1648, the fairies of A Midsummer Night's Dream, might well have sat as the models for the fairies mentioned in the Cosmographic of Peter Heylyn, where they are defined as " a pretty kind of little Fiends or Pigmey-Devils, but more inclined to sport than mischief." In 1653, in an Antidote against Atheism by Henry More, the fairies are referred to as "those little Puppet-Spirits, which they call Elves or Fairies."..'

And on Sir Walter Scott:

'In 1802-1803, Sir Walter Scott, in his essay "On the Fairies of Popular Superstition," called attention to the influence of Shakespeare upon the fairies of native tradition. Among the causes which he assigned for the change in the characteristics of the English fairies from those of the traditional dwarfs or berg-elfen of the Gothic and Finnish tribes from whom he would have them derive, he noted " the creative imagination of the sixteenth century " :


Many poets of the sixteenth century, and above all, our immortal Shakespeare, deserting the hackneyed fictions of Greece and Rome, sought for machinery in the superstitions of their native country.



" The fays, which nightly dance upon the wold," were an interesting subject; and the creative imagination of the bard, improving upon the vulgar belief, assigned to them many of those fanciful attributes and occupations, which posterity have since associated with the name of fairy. In such employments, as rearing the drooping flower, and arranging the disordered chamber, the fairies of South Britain gradually lost the harsher character of the dwarfs, or elves. Their choral dances were enlivened by the introduction of the merry goblin Puck, for whose freakish pranks they exchanged their original mischievous propensities. The fairies of Shakespeare, Drayton, and Mennis, therefore, at first exquisite fancy portraits, may be considered as having finally operated a change in the original which gave them birth.


While the fays of South Britain received such attractive and poetical embellishments, those of Scotland, who possessed no such advantage, retained more of their ancient, and appropriate character.


The original folk fairies "of Britain, and more especially hose of Scotland," Scott represented as " retaining the unamiable qualities, and diminutive size, of the Gothic lves."The fairies of England he seems to have regarded s harmless.   Scott's essay is an important document in the history of English fairy mythology, since it is one of the first statements, if not the first; of Shakespeare's influence on the fairies of popular superstition and of Shakespeare's use of Robin Goodfellow, and one of the first statements of the existence, in the 16th century, of two conceptions of fairyland, that of folk tradition and that created by Shakespeare.'

John Buchan

Author John Buchan passed on January 12, 1940.  Buchan was perhaps best known for his story "39 Steps", which Alfred Hitchcock turned into a movie.  Like Scott, who Buchan admired, he set several of his novels using scenery from his walks through Scotland, including especially the Scottish Borders. 

Buchan wrote more than one book on Walter Scott, and at least one other on the Borders, including:
"Some Notes on Sir Walter Scott (1924)"
"The Man and the Book: Sir Walter Scott (1925)"
"Sir Walter Scott (1932)"

This blogger appreciates Buchan's framing of Scott's biography into the major trends existing at various stages of Scott's life.  Buchan provides a very visual backdrop to historical events.